The Mouths Of Babes
by HellToupee
Summary: Jack asks Richard about his mask for the first time. Set in the Human Seasons universe, so go read that first if you haven't already; this won't make much sense otherwise.


Jack is seven before he figures out that not everyone's Papa wears a mask.

He asks Mama about it first. He's sitting at the table practicing his penmanship while Mama feeds the baby, who is gurgling and getting her mush all down the front of her dress. Jack makes a face and keeps writing; here in a minute she's going to smell or cry, and he'd miss his chance. Babies were annoying.

"Mama?"

"Yes, _ma petit_?" He pauses, savoring the endearment. Mama only ever spoke to him in French when they were alone; it occasionally upset Papa if he was having one of his 'turns', for reasons Jack didn't quite understand. He put down his pencil and twisted in his chair.

"Why does Papa wear his mask?" Mama freezes for a second like she's been hit with one of Peter Symonds' patented bonebreaker snowballs, until Genevieve starts whining. She wipes the baby's mouth and puts away the spoon, talking very calmly to him.

"A lot of reasons. What makes you ask, Jack?" Jack looks back at his homework, suddenly feeling as if he's done something very naughty that he didn't mean to do.

"Mister Darmody doesn't wear one. Neither does anyone else I know."

Mama picks Genevieve up from her high chair and sits down next to him at the table, ruffling his hair. He screws up his face and covers his head with his arms, pouting at her. She laughs and kisses him on the cheek, while his sister gives him a hearty smack on the ear with one sticky hand.

"I think this is a talk we need to have when Papa's here. Why don't we wait until he gets home tonight?"

Jack nods and picks up his pencil again, but he doesn't miss Mama's troubled sigh as he considers the complicated formation of the letter _Q._

* * *

><p>Mama and Papa spend a lot of time whispering in their bedroom with the door closed after Papa gets home that night. Jack can't make out most of it; all he manages to catch are words and phrases like <em>ready<em> and _not sure_ and, in one brief moment of clarity, a full sentence: _Marie, if he's old enough to…ask, he's old enough to see._

Finally they sound like they're about to come out and he scurries away to the sitting room, playing with his cowboys. Mama and Papa sit on the sofa and call him over to sit between them. He settles in and looks up at Papa expectantly.

"Jack, Mama says you…asked about my mask this afternoon." Jack nods, that strange feeling that he's done something wrong creeping back in again. Papa must have noticed it too, because he pulls jack into his lap and hugs him tight.

"It's not…bad for you to ask, Jack. There's nothing wrong with being…curious, and I appreciate you trying to…be discreet by asking Mama first." Jack looks over at Mama, who gives him one of her gentle smiles, and he reaches out for her. She slides along the sofa and Papa wraps an arm around her too, holding them both. They all stay like that until Papa speaks again.

"How far have you gotten in your history lessons at school, Jack?" It wasn't the question Jack was expecting. He twists around and looks up, his gaze sliding over the cold tin eye to search out the live, warm one.

"We've only just got to the War for Independence." Papa nods thoughtfully and shares a significant look with Mama. Jack hates these looks; it usually means that his parents are either about to turn weepy, or launch into a lecture. This time it's a lecture, but it's an 'I'm-teaching-you-something' lecture, not a 'You're-in-serious-trouble-go-to-your-room-and-think-about-what-you've-done' lecture, which is considerably more boring.

(Once when he was complaining about getting one of the you're-in-trouble ones to his friends, Danny Horowitz told him that he never got lectures; his father just told him to 'go get the belt'. When he asked Papa what that meant at dinner, Papa got very quiet and told him that he was never to be around Mister Horowitz without himself or Mama again. Mama later explained that it meant Mister Horowitz sometimes hit Danny, which Papa doesn't like at all. Jack could never quite look at Danny the same after that.)

Papa settles him in like he's about to get a bedtime story and begins.

"About fifteen years ago there was…a war. We call it the Great War. Lots of countries fought in it, like England, Ireland, France, Germany…and the United States. There were a lot…of soldiers in Europe, and I was one of them." Jack gasps and turns to Mama for confirmation. She nods, producing a photograph of a man in uniform from the side table.

"It was long before I met him, but he really was." Jack studies the picture closely; Papa is wearing a uniform, his back straight and proud, and he's smiling a little bit. It looks strange though; Papa's face is whole and regular. There's no mask. Jack can barely comprehend such a thing.

"You look very handsome, Papa." Jack hands him the picture and Papa looks at it, a little sadly.

"Thank you, Jack. I was what…you call a sharpshooter. The Army found out I'm good with a rifle…and gave me a special one, to shoot very far with. That's what I was doing in France when I got hurt." He taps the side of his face, the tin side, and gives Jack a pained smile.

"That's why I wear it, Jack. I was hurt so badly in the war…that I don't look like I did before. I don't look like other people…and I don't want to scare them, so I cover my face. Do you understand?" Jack nods, trying to take it all in. He has one more question, though, and he promises God he'll give Danny all his baseball cards if he can have the courage to ask it.

"Can I see, Papa? Please?" Papa just looks at him for a minute. Jack can't really tell what he's thinking; it looks like a cross between sad and scared.

"Jack, are you sure? This is a very…serious thing you're asking me to do." Jack squirms uncomfortably and looks at his bare toes, which glow in the dim light like little worms.

"Yes Papa. I'm sure."

They shift so that he's sitting on Mama's lap instead of Papa's now. For some reason, Mama leans over and gives Papa a kiss and whispers in his ear; Jack wrinkles his nose at that, and they both laugh at him. Papa drums his fingers nervously on his thigh while Jack and Mama get settled, and then turns away, unhooking his glasses from his ears and carefully covering his face with his hand before turning back around.

"Are you ready, Jack?" Mama squeezes him tightly as he nods yes, and Papa takes his hand away.

Jack flinches without meaning to.

Where Papa's eye should be, there's nothing except a great red hole; his nose is twisted and his cheek is sunken unnaturally, (more so than Mister O'Heaney, the math teacher, who looks like he's never eaten a bite of food in his life). Jack can see some of Papa's teeth even though his mouth is closed.

He buries his face in Mama's arm, ashamed to feel himself starting to cry; he's seven, and seven-year-old boys are too big to cry. But he's more than a little scared, and a little bit sad under that; whatever did that to Papa must have hurt, and he doesn't like the idea of Papa hurting. It's almost too big a thing to think of.

Mama carries him off to bed then, and the last thing he sees before she sweeps him out of the room is Papa sitting on the sofa staring at the picture of himself as a soldier, his hands shaking.

* * *

><p>He doesn't quite know what to say to his father in the morning, when it's time to go to school.<p>

Papa always walks him to school, and they talk about everything from what Jack's studying to baseball (Papa doesn't know as much about it as Mama does, of course, but even he knows who Babe Ruth is), but today it's just silence. Papa's tense, and he holds Jack's hand almost too tight. Just before the gate Jack digs his heels in and stops them, dropping his bookbag and mussing his shirt in the process.

"I'm sorry if I made you sad last night, Papa." Papa gets a strange, soft look on his face and kneels in front of Jack, straightening his shirt.

"And I'm sorry if I…scared you, Jack." They look at each other for a minute before Jack wraps his arms around his father's neck and carefully hugs him. Papa hugs him back.

"I love you, sweetheart." He lets Jack go and sets his bookbag on his shoulder, giving him a gentle push towards the schoolyard. Jack turns to wave at him from the schoolhouse door, and he waves back before turning and walking back in the direction they came.

When Jack gets home Papa's in his bedroom, looking at an old Bible.

"What's that?" Papa pats the bed beside him and Jack sits down, looking at the pages of the bible; there's cutouts from old magazines pasted in to look like a family scrapbook, with mothers and fathers and houses. Papa shakes his head and chuckles at a page full of fat babies.

"There was a while after the war when…I thought I would never have a family…like ours. So I made my own." Jack traces the babies with his fingertips, counting them up. There are eight.

"And then you met Mama."

"And then I met Mama." Jack turns another page. There's a drawing of Papa as he is now, and a photograph of him like the one before, except it's just of his face. He compares them closely. For some reason it's slightly more frightening to look at on paper than in real life; on paper it might be a monster come to eat him in a book, where in real life it's just Papa, who plays checkers with him and knows his favorite color is green and sits with him when he has nightmares. Jack snuggles up next to his father and buries his face in his side.

"I'm glad you're my Papa."

Papa drops a kiss on his head. Jack springs up after a few seconds and heads for the door; it's dinnertime, and he can hear Mama calling from the kitchen. He waits for Papa to close the Bible and slip it into a drawer before he turns off the light so they can head downstairs together.


End file.
